


Song of Hearts

by PrettyArbitrary



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Consensual Somnophilia, Double Penetration, Fluff, M/M, Mpreg, Oviposition, Semi-Public Sex, Sirens, Tentacle Sex, Tentacles, octosiren Gabriel, the babies are cute though, this fic is basically weird smut and aesthetic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-10-30 17:13:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10881312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettyArbitrary/pseuds/PrettyArbitrary
Summary: “I see hearts.  I sing people their deepest desires.  You, for example.”  Gabriel rolls his head to the side, damp curls bouncing over his eyes as he looks up at Jack.  “You’re an adventurer.  You want a new challenge, a frontier to try yourself against.”  He reaches up one dark-clawed hand to trace it down Jack’s face.  He’s as mysterious and mesmerizing as any of his promises, and Jack doesn’t pull away.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is complete. It got a bit long so I'm breaking it into five chapters, and I'll post one a day till they're all up.
> 
> This is absolutely the weirdest thing I've ever written. Welcome to 10,000 words of kink bingo-driven PWP.

A fellow sailor who liked to read too many books once threatened to start calling Jack ‘Odysseus’ for his creative style of captaincy. Maybe, Jack thinks, he had a point. After all, there are powers in the world not to be fucked with, and yet here he is, chatting with one of them instead of running sensibly in the other direction. 

Then again, from the amused glint in the siren’s dark eyes when Jack introduced himself, it might have saved his life.

“Is it true your song is irresistible?” Jack asks the siren. Not that the creature needs any help with being fascinating. He looks captivating and deadly just lounging as he is, octopus-like appendages of his lower body trailing in the water and twitching lazily across the rocks lining the spit of land where Jack had been stretching his legs when they encountered each other. They’ve been talking for a good hour now, and Jack has settled on a neighboring boulder, boots stripped off and pants rolled up to dangle his feet in the water. It’s a beautiful, sultry day and the cool of the waves is welcome.

“Yes.” Gabriel—that’s the name he gave, and Jack’s not about to press the oceanic godling on whether he’s lying—adjusts his position, gleaming dark-mottled limbs rolling as he shifts to anchor him securely against the slow slap of the tide. He’s wearing a fortune in strings of pearls and fine gold and silver chains, which he’s wrapped around himself like strings of Christmas lights. They gleam jauntily in the sun against his dark skin and form a strangely beautiful counterpoint to the assorted patterns of scars scattered across both his upper and lower body. Jack knows without asking that no matter how lazily he’s sprawled, he’s met a fellow warrior. “Do you want to hear?”

Jack bites the inside of his cheek. He does, but his stupidity has some limits. “How does it work?”

“I see hearts. I sing people their deepest desires. You, for example.” Gabriel rolls his head to the side, damp curls bouncing over his eyes as he looks up at Jack. “You’re an adventurer. You want a new challenge, a frontier to try yourself against.” He smiles slyly, teeth brilliant white and sharp. “For you, I don’t even have to lie. I could tell you about what’s under the ocean. About monsters that can only live in the crushing depths, sunken treasures haunted by their undying guards, and ruins older than humanity lost with all their secrets down there in the dark. Some of them are so deep and strange that they’re even alien to me.” He reaches up one dark-clawed hand to trace it down Jack’s face. He’s as mysterious and mesmerizing as any of his promises, and Jack doesn’t pull away, even when the tip of that claw drags with flirtatious menace along his jaw. “Just think of it, Jack. Sights beyond anything you’ve ever imagined. Places no human has ever looked upon and survived.”

Jack doesn’t regret giving this mer-thing his name. All the wisdom cautions against it, but if Gabriel can see into a man’s heart, then what’s the point of withholding the word that’s simply a label for it? “If no man can look on them and survive,” he says, “then there’s not much point in it for me. It’s not a challenge if there’s no promise of surviving to enjoy the victory. It’s just suicide.”

Gabriel’s clawed fingers trail further back till they tangle in the hair at Jack’s nape. “I didn’t say it was impossible, did I? You just have to know the right...person.”

Jack licks the salt spray from his lips. The afterimage of the siren’s touch tingles against his skin. “And do I know the right...person?”

“You might be acquainted with him,” Gabriel says playfully. He pushes himself away from the rocks to slip back into the water until he’s sunken up to his shoulders. With a subtle ripple of limbs, he moves to float in front of Jack, holding out a hand in invitation. “Come here, Jack. I'll show you.”

Jack looks at his outstretched hand and raises an eloquent eyebrow.

Gabriel laughs. “I'm not going to hurt you, Jack. I just want to show you how it works. I promise I’ll return you to dry land safe and sound. Within minutes, even.”

How a siren knows or cares what minutes are, Jack doesn’t question. In the time they’ve been talking, he’s known all sorts of things he’s had no business knowing. Jack bites his lip and stares at Gabriel's hand, then at his scarred, fiercely beautiful face. His kind have a thing for promises. If he makes one, then he intends to keep it.

Had Jack thought his stupidity knew limits? How optimistic of him.

He pulls off his jacket, shirt and belt and dumps them in a heap by his boots. Gabriel watches him strip with a pleased air. And then Jack takes his hand and lets him pull him into the water. “Show me.”

Pulling Jack out into a deeper spot in the cove, Gabriel places his hands on Jack’s pale shoulders and begins to push him down under the water. He’s gentle, and goes slowly enough that Jack could twist free if he wanted to. But even so, a part of his mind warns him that he might be about to die. He should really be more concerned by that, but then again he’s faced death by drowning almost as many times as he’s faced getting up in the morning.

Underwater, Gabriel's arms wrap around him and hold him close—and then not only his arms. Those must be Gabriel's tentacles encircling his legs and waist, holding him in a sleek, strong grip. They feel muscular and velvet-soft, surprisingly warm but smooth almost to the point of slickness except where the rough-edged suckers clasp against his skin like little mouths intent on leaving lovebites. Jack shivers with the thrill of his hold, and he hears Gabriel laugh through the water. His upper body is almost the same as a man’s, powerful with muscle and raked with scars from barnacles, teeth, weapons and other things Jack can only guess at, but his arms around Jack feel as comfortingly familiar as the tentacles are strange. He’s wild and gorgeous and predatory, dangerous and welcoming all at once, and Jack finds himself responding, melting into that embrace to press closer, his hardness growing against Gabriel's lower abdomen.

Gabriel tilts his head and moves in for a kiss, lips parting to close over Jack’s. His tongue, slick and mobile as one of his tentacles, traces the outline and then the seam of Jack’s lips just firmly enough to make it clear he's requesting entry.

Jack shivers again at the risk of what he’s doing and opens for him, meeting that tongue with the tip of his own in a little shock of sensation. Gabriel tastes like salt and fish and seaweed and something sweet and utterly foreign. He deepens the kiss, exploring Jack’s mouth until he wins a moan from him. Then without warning, Gabriel breathes deep and forcefully into him. 

Jack struggles as he feels his lungs fill with water.

Gabriel lets him go.

They’re within an arm’s reach of the surface. Jack’s barely begun to flounder before his head breaks through to cough and gasp for air. It doesn’t work. He draws in a lungful and feels like he’s choking on it.

Then Gabriel is there, limbs capturing Jack’s again, stilling his flailing. “Calm down! Calm down, trust me.” He pulls Jack underwater once more. “Now breathe.” 

Jack looks at him wide-eyed through the seawater. Gabriel captures his face and brings their mouths together again, breathing another flood of liquid into him. “Breathe.”

He tries not to, but his lungs spasm and he can’t stop himself from inhaling water again. Gabriel’s eyes laugh at him from inches away. “Have you noticed you’re not dead?” The strange quality of his voice cuts right past Jack’s hearing and panic and seems to drop the words straight into his mind.

He’s...not. How…?

“Magic,” Gabriel tells him, in a tone so saucy Jack can’t tell whether it’s supposed to be a joke. He holds Jack there for another few breaths, while he twists and marvels at the unutterable strangeness of water swishing in and out of his body yet serving him like it’s air. Once Jack’s frantic motions have calmed, Gabriel pulls him back to the surface and into another kiss.

This time when Gabriel breathes into him, Jack can feel the warm air break through the water in his lungs like a dissipating fog. When Gabriel lets him go, he sucks in a huge breath and finds that everything feels perfectly normal.

Gabriel links his hands behind his head with a smile and drifts backward a few feet, giving Jack some space even though he looks smug over the trick he pulled. “That’s how it works.”

He helps Jack back up onto the rocks—“I did promise”—and then half-hauls himself out of the water to lean on another boulder nearby, watching with an openly interested gaze as Jack flops backwards and tries to pull himself together from the shock of nearly drowning...or at least believing he was. Gabriel’s lower limbs periodically reach out to brush against his legs. Jack wonders if he’s checking on him somehow or if Gabriel just finds Jack as interesting to touch as Jack does him.

Jack’s grip on sanity is beginning to firm up again when Gabriel asks, “Would you like to see the kelp forest?” 

His voice sounds innocent, but when Jack glances over, the expression on his face is pure temptation. 

“You’ve wondered, haven’t you, how it would feel to belong in the ocean?” Gabriel coaxes. “All those diving suits and tubes. You humans have to put in so much work just to enter the water. I can show you what the green light and shadow feel like on your naked skin.” One of his tentacles creeps over and twines around Jack’s leg to stroke gently at the soft skin behind his knee, almost like the promise of a kelp frond fluttering over him. Seeming to know that he has Jack halfway charmed, he gives him a wicked grin and purrs, “I promise I'll have you back safe on dry land by sunset.”

Jack thinks about how it felt to breathe water, the terror and thrill of belonging to the ocean if only for just a moment...and he pushes himself back into the water. “Show me, then.”

Knowing what’s coming helps, the second time Gabriel kisses the sea into him. He still panics—millennia of animal instinct are hard to overcome—but Gabriel holds him, makes him focus on him and that silk-and-sandpaper voice that’s halfway in his head until Jack’s subconscious accepts that his lungs are still pumping and that oxygen can still be found in his bloodstream.

The kelp forest is worth it. He's never seen anything like it. It's like an uncanny fairyland version of the most beautiful forest he's ever seen, and Gabriel leads him through the olivine shadows and undulating jewel-flashes of its wildlife like he belongs there. Schools of little fish flash silver in the filtered light as they flick away from their visitors. Fish of bright orange and blue and yellow glint shyly between the curtaining drifts of kelp fronds. Blue urchins, rust-colored crabs, something that looks like a lacy pink fern all wave gently in the water currents of the lower reaches.

Jack has always felt like he belonged to the sea. His entire adult life, he’s sailed on it, fought on it, lived on its bounty and fought to survive its terrors. But he has never known it like this, surrounding him on all sides, in his veins, in his lungs. Gabriel wasn't lying: on this jaunt, he gives Jack a taste of what it is to be a part of the world beneath. It's heady, and Jack understands instinctively that it's dangerous for him. This is the kind of temptation he could lose himself to.

In the shadow of a wrecked sailboat, with kelp leaves winding around them like heavy silken streamers, Gabriel clasps Jack to him and kisses him until Jack winds his legs around Gabriel’s waist, aching with need. Gabriel smiles against his mouth and his limbs come up to cradle Jack’s body. 

Gabriel kneads him everywhere, a slow rippling suction across all his exposed skin. Jack closes his eyes and trembles at the sensation of it across his chest, his shoulders, his back, his calves. Gabriel’s hands undo his pants, pushing them down around his hips to free his erection so Gabriel can cup it. He strokes it bemusedly at first, and then with delight at the way his touch makes Jack squirm in his hold.

Jack’s ankles are caught in a tight winding grip where he’s hooked them behind Gabriel’s back, keeping him locked around Gabriel’s waist. With his free hand, Gabriel cups the curve of Jack’s pectoral muscle, squeezing it and teasing curiously at his nipple when it tightens at the stimulation. Jack gasps and arches into the touch for more. A tentacle massages down the small of his back, the rasp and pressure of the suction cups sending little sparkles of sensation up and down his spine. Its nimble tip curves around to cup his ass and prod between his cheeks.

There’s a moment when Jack hangs suspended, uncertain about what’s going to happen. Gabriel captures his face in his hand and brings their mouths together again, kissing him again and again and then continuing down his throat as the tentacle behind him toys at his entrance and then begins to push in. Jack twists, caught between it and the hand still working his cock.

He doesn’t know why he’s allowing this when he’s never let anyone do this to him before—even in the senses that humans are capable of. Doesn’t know why Gabriel feels better than anyone or anything that’s ever touched him. They say things about sirens—about their intoxicating nature, about their allure. But to Jack it feels more like Gabriel’s touch throws into contrast the hollowness of every other encounter he’s had.

The thing inside him writhes, stretching him gently as it pushes deeper, dragging languidly along his inner walls to set him writhing in turn in Gabriel’s embrace. He skims his hands across Gabriel’s body, his own pleasure making him hungry to reciprocate. Gabriel’s torso is smooth, feels just like human skin and moves against him with the movements of human flesh and bone, but he’s missing certain human anatomy, no nipples or cock. Jack hesitates when he feels the flesh change texture beneath his touch, down around Gabriel’s hips. It becomes softer, velvety, ripples responsively under his hands, and Jack almost withdraws until Gabriel catches at his wrists to tug them back, arches against him in a way that communicates across the boundaries of species. 

Jack follows Gabriel’s tug; his hands are pulled into the folds of Gabriel’s lower limbs. Unsure what to do, Jack wiggles his fingers and strokes at the almost impossibly soft texture of his skin there. Gabriel growls and bows forward against Jack’s shoulder. His entire body tightens in and around Jack’s, and Jack jerks in his grip as his orgasm takes him at the sudden stimulation.

He lets Gabriel gather him up against his chest and drift toward the surface while he tries to figure out what he just participated in.

“I admit I didn’t tell the entire truth before,” Gabriel says against his throat once he’s given Jack his breath back. “You’ve got something else you want even more than your craving for adventure.”

Head pulled back so Gabriel can kiss his way down his neck, Jack simply hums questioningly.

“You want someone to share it with.” Gabriel pulls Jack’s head back down to look him in the face. “Will I see you again?”

That would be an insane thing to do. This whole adventure has been insane. He’s half-convinced he’s been a breath or a wrong word away from death every minute of the entire afternoon.

He wants to.

Gabriel smiles at him.

The siren is as good as his word. By the time the horizon is splitting the sun, Jack's feet are back on the spit of gravelly sand where his clothes lie waiting for him. Gabriel folds his arms over a rock and watches him dry his hair with his shirt.

“I’m going back to sea soon,” Jack tells him at last. “I suppose you can find me anytime you like, there, but there’s no privacy on board a ship. I’ll come back here when we come back to port.”

“I’ll see you then,” Gabriel replies.


	2. Chapter 2

This time when Gabriel turns up he’s in the Aegean Sea, where Jack’s ship is in harbor for three days to take on supplies. Jack just shakes his head and smiles when he sees him. He has yet to understand how a creature Gabriel’s size manages to cross the ocean faster than a naval ship and find him so easily. Gabriel’s answer has always been a shrug and, “I swim.”

Gabriel leads him to a picturesque underwater grotto that glows sapphire and aquamarine with filtered sunlight. They hang together in the entrance, hands clasped, while Jack takes in the sight. He can feel Gabriel’s eyes on him, drinking in his reactions. He never seems to tire of finding little marvels for Jack to wonder at, and he enjoys having his work admired. 

It’s beautiful, and Jack tells him so. He grins at the way Gabriel puffs up with pride, as though he created the place himself instead of just finding it. When Gabriel reaches up to catch his chin, Jack tips his face into the touch and lets him turn his head back and forth. “It matches your eyes.”

“You like sparkly things, don’t you?” Jack asks him with a laugh.

Gabriel grins. “You could say that. Sparkly thing.” His smile is possessive, and so is his embrace when he twines himself around Jack. Jack knows him well enough by now not to be afraid of it. Gabriel can be greedy, demanding with a prince’s offhanded arrogance, and sometimes temperamental, but he’s always careful and gentle with Jack.

Jack gave up on bringing clothes with him on these trips a while ago. They don’t keep him warm in the water and he just keeps ruining perfectly good sets of trousers. Besides, he’s come to enjoy Gabriel’s effortless access to his body, the way he’ll sometimes reach over and smooth a hand over his belly or caress him absently with a tentacle he’s looped around Jack’s waist to keep them together in the currents.

Now he lets himself sway in the clutch of Gabriel’s limbs like the sea anemones clustered near the cave entrance. Two of them spread his thighs to let Gabriel get between them, pulling his legs up to hold them captive around Gabriel’s waist. The cups lining his tentacles suck at the soft skin of Jack’s inner thighs until he starts grinding his hips against Gabriel’s belly. Gabriel laughs and plays with him a bit more, until Jack is groaning with frustration and trying to tug his tentacles closer to where he wants them to be. “You’ve gotten good at this.”

“Are you complaining?”

Jack grabs his head to kiss him fast and rough. “Only if you don’t _fuck me._ ”

Gabriel laughs again. 

Jack’s breath is knocked out of him in a whuff as he’s penetrated in a single thrust by a stiffened tentacle. “Better?” Gabriel purrs. Not that he lets Jack answer. It starts pumping in and out of him, setting a pace that won’t let him catch his breath. 

The thing curves and twists and thrusts inside him, working him with the many textures of skin and sucker and scar till Jack has to scrabble for a grip on his self-control. Sex with Gabriel is always like this, almost overwhelming with all the things happening to his body at once. As far as he knows, Gabriel has never orgasmed with him; Jack’s not even sure if he can. But he certainly enjoys making Jack lose his mind. He pushes Jack up his body, licking and sucking down over his chest and nipples and stomach until he’s nosing into Jack’s pubic hair and Jack realizes with a twist in his gut what’s coming next. With the tentacle already fucking him hungrily, he holds onto Gabriel’s curls for dear life as that warm mouth closes over his cock and begins to suck.

He rolls his hips frantically, caught between fucking and being fucked. Every time he begins to find a rhythm, Gabriel flicks his tongue into his slit and rubs at his prostate with the ridge of one of his suckers, until finally Jack arches with a cry and comes.

Gabriel swallows and then lets go of his cock. He looks absolutely smug as he pulls Jack down till they’re face to face again. “It’s a long time since your people left it, but I can still taste the sea in you.” 

Jack steadies himself with his hands on Gabriel’s shoulders, trying to collect himself. The tentacle is still moving inside him, stroking delicately around his sensitized prostate, being gentle with him but still making him shiver with sensation. “Not done?” he asks breathlessly, shifting restlessly on it. It’s a struggle to stay still under that stimulation, and anyway he enjoys the hungry way Gabriel looks at him when he’s making Jack’s hips dance for him.

But now Gabriel’s eyes are closed, his lips pressed against Jack’s shoulder. Listening to him, Jack thinks; listening to his heart, he calls it. Jack wonders what he hears, exactly. “I enjoy all of the ways I can make your body sing for me.” 

Whatever form of pleasure Gabriel takes from their intercourse, Jack knows the groin of his tentacles is sensitive. He pushes his hand into those impossibly soft folds to pet them, and is repaid with a tremor and a rumbling sigh. With enough attention here, Jack can make Gabriel purr and shake for him.

A tentacle winds around Jack’s wrist, trapping his hand in place so he’ll keep stroking. “I want you again,” Gabriel says shakily. He nuzzles into Jack’s hair, the current of his breath stirring it like a caress. “I want you over and over.”

The tentacle inside Jack is quickly working him through oversensitivity back into arousal. He moans and rocks his hips. “What good does it do for you?” he gasps. “It's not like it is for me, is it?”

Gabriel opens his eyes and looks at him. There’s something wild and intent in his face. A part of Jack quivers at the full attention of a predator. “Oh, Jack. You have no idea how good you feel.” He leans in to run his tongue along Jack’s jaw. “I can feel the way you shake for me inside. The way you cry out in need. You sing from the inside out, and it’s all for me.” Gabriel catches Jack’s head in both hands, cradling his jaw with his claw-tipped thumbs stroking Jack’s cheeks. “You want me,” he whispers. 

There’s something like awe in that rich, rough voice. An almost vulnerable wonder in those beautiful dark eyes. With his free hand, Jack reaches up to mirror Gabriel, cupping his hand against one scarred, sculpted cheek. _I love you._ Jack doesn’t say the words, doesn’t even think them, exactly, but it rings between them as clearly as if he had.

Gabriel’s lips tremble, then firm. “There’s something I want, Jack. Something I’ve wanted to do to you. Will you trust me?”

There’s something raw in his voice and face. A hunger, a hope. Jack can almost feel the power of a desire Gabriel can’t bear to name tugging at him, and he wonders if this is what hearing someone’s heart sounds like.

He knows instinctively, with years of experience at challenging his own limits, that he’s about to get in over his head. But he thinks he’d do anything to answer the need he sees in Gabriel, and there’s nowhere he’d rather be than in over his head together with him. “I trust you. Do it.”

When Gabriel sweeps him into a passionate, grateful kiss, Jack grabs him to hold him there, deepening it until their bodies meld against one another. _I love you. I do love you._ He does think the words this time, and he’d swear he can feel Gabriel respond.

The tentacle inside him twitches in warning, and then plunges deeper. Jack breaks their kiss to cry out in surprise. Then he cries out again because it doesn’t stop, wriggling deep into his body to open him up beyond the point where anything but Gabriel could possibly reach. He bows forward and pants into Gabriel’s shoulder, feeling the strands of little seed pearls Gabriel wears looped around himself bite into his cheek. It’s not quite painful, what Gabriel is doing to him, but it’s overwhelming, both the physical sensation and the awareness that what’s happening to his body is beyond what it was designed for.

“Shhhhh.” Gabriel cards through his hair with gentle claws, rocking him as he’s taken. “You’ll enjoy this, I promise.”

He already is. Gabriel’s tentacles curl protectively up and around him, capturing his limbs and pulling at them to wrap him around Gabriel’s body and keep him there. Suction cups suckle at the bare skin of his thighs and abdomen and back until the need pooling in the cradle of Jack’s hips floods through his entire body. None of it is anything Gabriel hasn’t done before, but there’s something newly intense and intimate about the way he’s handling Jack now. It puts a thrill through him, in fear for the risk of giving too much of himself and the desire to do just that. 

Another tentacle teases at his entrance. Jack snaps his head up to look wide-eyed at Gabriel, who looks back with heavy-lidded want. “I won’t hurt you, Jack, I promise you.” 

What he promises, he always carries out. Jack lets his eyes slip closed with a sigh and relaxes into Gabriel’s hold. The fine tip of it licks softly at his rim, and then nudges with increasing firmness until he can feel himself stretching further as it begins to press inside. He claws at Gabriel’s back, forehead pressed against his collarbone, as he’s opened further, deeper by the slow increments of its thrusts and withdrawals.

“Gabriel…” he groans. He feels lost in the conflict of his own body, stretched wide and craving even more but sparking with an unbearable pleasure that’s on the edge of danger.

Gabriel pushes his hand between their bodies to massage gently at his abdomen, just above his cock. Jack makes a low, helpless noise. God help him, he can feel Gabriel pressing out against his hand from within him. 

“Shhhhh, it’s all right. You’re so beautiful, Jack. Look at you. You’re so strong. You can take more than you know, my love, and you want to find out just how much that is as much as I do, don’t you?” There’s a lyrical quality to his rough voice that Jack’s never heard before. It’s so beautiful it hurts.

He twists and moans, past the point of self-control as he feels the two tentacles shift inside him. They feel like they’re winding around each other. He wants to move, even though he’s not sure it’s a good idea. When he tries, he finds Gabriel won’t let him. His lower body is held still in a secure grip. He moans again at his own immobilization.

“I want to see you in extremity, Jack,” Gabriel continues. The music of his voice weaves into Jack, snags on his bones and in his mind and tugs until he can barely resist the pull. Gabriel’s never used the siren song on him before. No wonder men are willing to die for it. “I want to see you swept away, stripped of all your self-control. I want to keep you, to fill you with pleasure so intense you can’t escape, to see how much you can bear before you come apart for me. And I want to watch you come apart for me. Naked for me. I want to hold you while you can’t hold yourself, when my grip on you is the only thing that’s left.”

Jack whimpers into Gabriel’s throat, nuzzling and nipping at him as the movement inside him changes from a slow ripple into thrusting that gradually builds in intensity. The way the things are coiled creates contours that drag rhythmically across his prostate with each stroke in and out. Shaking with pleasure that only seems to crest higher with every movement, he twists his fingers into the gold and pearl chains wrapped around Gabriel’s upper arms and does his best to hang on.

“I want to put something inside you, Jack.” He bumps their noses together, nudging Jack’s face till he looks up. A shudder of need ripples through Gabriel’s body and out through the water around them. “Please let me.”

His voice is so vulnerable. When Jack nods, the thick tendrils inside him quiver, and Gabriel pulls their mouths together in a kiss that they both groan into as something forces Jack a little bit wider. It feels like a soft lump pushing through the tentacle inside him, until he feels it ooze out the tip to settle, hot and squishy, into a place somewhere in his core.

His breathing picks up as the tip of Gabriel’s tentacle nudges it a little inside him. Oh, god. “It’s...” He bucks his hips as it shifts again. “Gabriel. It’s _tingling._ ”

Gabriel’s laugh is strained but soft with affection. “Another one.”

Jack’s back arches with pleasure and discomfort as another lump is pushed into him. When it bumps into the first one, they both roll a bit inside him, and he cries out as his entire body tenses in an orgasm that redoubles as it makes him bear him down on the things inside him.

“Good,” Gabriel croons. He strokes his nose against Jack’s, seeming captivated. “Good, Jack. Just give yourself to it. Let it happen and it will feel so good.” 

Jack drags in desperate lungfuls of water as another one pushes into him, and then a fourth, tingling and rubbing against his hypersensitive insides in a way that hovers right on the edge of what he can bear. Gabriel is panting and shaking against him, seeming almost as carried away as Jack is. Jack tries to hang onto sanity by focusing on him. He’s never seen Gabriel like this and he’s so beautiful. His cheeks are flushed darker than usual, eyes half-lidded and gleaming a deep rich amber in the shimmering blue light, breathing through parted lips that can’t seem to keep away from Jack’s mouth and skin for more than seconds at a time.

The things keep coming, pushing into him to be nudged and nestled into place inside him. He comes again with a strangled scream, body cramping on the textured knots inside him. It just makes them roll around and stimulate him more, until Jack is tossing his head in a silent plea for it to stop, just for a moment. Just enough to let him pull himself together. He feels swollen, full to the point of stretching. How many more of the things are there? How much can he take?

“I’m sorry,” Gabriel murmurs, voice cracking. “I’m sorry, I can’t stop. There’s not much more.” His suckers knead at Jack’s sides and back and belly while he murmurs little encouragements and apologies and endearments even as he groans and shakes himself. He bows his head against Jack’s, his breathing growing heavier as he keeps pushing more of the things into Jack’s body. Warm water from his lungs mixes with Jack’s in the pocket their bodies create between them. 

Everything loses focus except Gabriel’s body, and Gabriel’s voice winding through his tattered thoughts. “Stay with me, Jack. Always.” The words tug at him. He wonders vaguely if it’s the power of the song or the force of his desire for the invitation. “We’ll never let each other go. All the oceans and their treasures will be ours, above and below, and they’ll be all the richer for having you to share them with.” 

He doesn’t know whether he replies.

After a little, Jack realizes no more of the things are coming. He tries to push up from where he’s slumped across Gabriel’s chest. The things inside him roll and bump, sending little aftershocks through him that build on each other with every movement until his arms buckle under him.

“Gabriel,” he finally manages. He barely recognizes his own voice.

Gabriel massages at his shoulders. “It’s alright, Jack. We’re nearly done.” He said that before. 

Jack wants to ask him what that means when the thick tentacle inside him begins moving again. “Wait…!”

Gabriel cuts him off with his tongue in his mouth.

It drags across his abused prostate with every stroke. He whines pleadingly, genuinely on the edge of what he can take as it pushes him inexorably toward yet another orgasm. But Gabriel tightens around him first, with a shout of ecstasy. Jack is shocked to feel hot, thick fluid spurting deep inside him. It feels slick and soothing on his tormented inner walls.

Gabriel’s tentacle keeps thrusting and wriggling inside him, not allowing him to escape. Gabriel keeps him cradled tight, purring, as the tip of it nudges around inside him, prodding at the little lumps, rolling them around to spread the fluid inside him. One more orgasm rips through him, so intense his vision whites out for a moment. And then, finally, the appendage withdraws from him.

Jack is too exhausted to do anything except let Gabriel roll them over and drape Jack on top of him, clasped against him.

They lie there like that for a while. Gabriel lounges with his eyes closed, absently stroking Jack’s hair. Jack watches the blue and green light ripple through the little cave, and basks in the cradle of Gabriel’s limbs and the exhausted, liquid pleasure as his body finally relaxes and accommodates. He lets it drag him down to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

Jack leans on the rail of the tiny balcony belonging to the captain’s cabin and lets his free hand rest on his belly. From the outside it feels flat as ever, but from the inside he can feel the little lumps pressing against him, along with that heated tingle he’s felt ever since Gabriel put them there.

Eggs. That’s what Gabriel put inside him. He made Jack _pregnant._

He could have gotten them out. Gabriel had explained, once Jack woke up, and given him the option. But Gabriel had been so…so yearning, still with that vulnerable desire that had melted Jack’s heart so decisively. And something about the idea, weird and unsettling as it was, had grabbed Jack by the hind-brain. Pregnant, with Gabriel’s offspring. Taboo. Alien. Dangerous to the very core of his human nature. Something in Jack has always been compelled by that. It’s the same thing that draws him to the sea, and to Gabriel. 

But Gabriel had left out the bit where Jack can constantly _feel them._ Nothing he tries ever lets him escape the subtle awareness of things filling him, or that ever-burning little ember of arousal that flares up at every possible provocation. 

It’s been a long, long week. The ship has been on maneuvers, and his time has belonged to his crew. He’s operating on a week’s worth of hour-long naps in his office and a persistent hard-on that’s good for keeping him awake but not very helpful for his focus.

But they’re on their way back to port, and Jack can finally take refuge in the privacy of his cabin. Whistles and shouts carry distantly from the deck, but there’s nothing in his range of vision but the sky and the ship’s wake cutting a white path through the gunmetal blue Atlantic. He slides his hand downward to his crotch and lets his head fall back at the relief of finally being able to touch himself.

Jack covers his mouth with his free hand to muffle his groan when he kneads his balls. They feel almost bruised, but then he’s basically spent a week being edged. Gabriel’s eggs shift gently inside him when his hips roll into his own touch, and he flushes from head to toe with the pleasure/pain ache of fresh arousal. This is exactly what it’s been like for days. It’s just a goddamn relief to finally have it happen when he can actually do something about it. He moans again into his hand and lets his eyes flutter shut for a second.

He should go get into bed and finish giving himself the handjob of a lifetime...but something about doing this to himself before the endless blank expanse of sea and sky makes him want to stay right where he is. There’s no one out there, anywhere between him and the horizon, and yet after the things he’s seen, he’s keenly aware of how many eyes could be watching him from the waves right now. It adds a breathless curl to the tug of his trousers coming undone, to the cool air on his skin as he pulls them down his hips to take himself in hand.

Gabriel would be delighted to know how thoroughly he’s fucked Jack over with this egg stunt. After waiting so long, his cock is reluctant to harden fully. He runs the pads of his fingers over his length, letting himself acclimate to the intensity of touch, and thinks of Gabriel out there, enjoying the show. 

For all Jack knows, he could be halfway across the planet right now. But just as easily he could be watching from below, licking his tongue over those pointed teeth of his as he savors the flush rising to Jack’s face. Jack pushes his shirt up and runs a hand over his chest. The cool air feels good on the heated skin there, and on his sensitized nipples. They tighten with a tingling pull, and he pinches one. Imagines it as sharp teeth and a warm wet tongue.

It’s a thrill, to feel so bare under the open sky. Gabriel would enjoy seeing him like this, nude from thighs to collarbones. He’d like watching Jack take his time with his own body. He’d revel in knowing that his eggs keep Jack constantly on the edge, turned on as if Gabriel’s always inside him, slowly fucking him.

He’d enjoy knowing how quickly Jack has become fond of them. How thinking of them as _theirs_ floods him with an arousal deeper than physical desire. How they’re an ever-present reminder that Jack is sharing his body, and all its experiences, and it makes him ache endlessly for Gabriel’s touch.

He squeezes the base of his cock and arches back, reaching for the little pucker of his entrance with his other hand. The contact of his own fingers pushes a surprised whimper out of him. God, his body feels hungry for it, like it’s opening up to let him sink in.

It’s hard to focus on doing two things at once. He gets a rhythm going, alternating between jerking himself off with one hand and teasing his opening with the other, rocking his hips to fuck himself just a couple of inches deep. The eggs inside him roll with his movements in a way that feels alive, and with his eyes closed he can almost believe he’s being taken, stretched open and then invaded by something squirmy and intimate. He’s panting and whimpering within moments, biting his lip to control the sounds so they don’t carry far enough for the sailors standing lookout to hear.

He feels sensual like this, vulnerable and powerful, almost the way he does with Gabriel. The sea breeze kisses his bare, overheated skin, chills the sweat on him, and the nakedness of being exposed to the sea and sky makes every touch so much more intense. His balls ache, drawn up tight in readiness, and the pain of it merges in with the anticipatory tension in every line of his body.

There’s a shout building in his chest as the first crest of climax threatens. He shoves his knuckles into his mouth to stifle it, then moans around them as the second contraction of orgasm is almost as powerful as the first. They almost wring him dry, the energy that’s keeping him standing flowing out of him with each ripple of pleasure until he feels boneless as a jellyfish.

He props himself against the ship’s hull and leans there till his breathing calms, one hand pressed against his abdomen where he can still feel the echoes of his muscles fluttering around the little bumps. Their children.


	4. Chapter 4

Jack wears a pendant gifted to him by Gabriel. The stone is flecked with sparkling shades of blue from midnight to palest turquoise, clasped almost greedily in a setting of black wrought iron coils that remind Jack of Gabriel’s. When he hung it around Jack’s neck, he claimed it would keep them together while Jack was away. Jack wears it to bed, and nothing else.

When he cups his hand over it where it lays on his breast, Jack would swear he can hear a low crooning melody: Gabriel's deep voice, singing for him. It grows stronger the longer he listens, until he can all but feel Gabriel in the room with him, sitting just out of Jack’s line of sight. Jack settles back on his pillow and sighs as the burden of loneliness and nerves lifts.

He presses a hand to his stomach to feel the eggs. They settle, spreading out in him a little and sinking back toward his spine, sending a warm glow of desire through him with their soft shifting. It’s a desire that goes so much deeper than just a physical craving. His body and mind want to be reunited with Gabriel, want to soak in the presence of his mate and be swallowed in his touch and the intangible, absolute essence of him.

Having them inside him helps ease the loneliness a little too. They remind him that he’s not alone, that he has...a family.

He wraps his arms around his middle, hugging himself and the little ones within him. It’s unnerving, how deeply he wants this, how much he likes being pregnant. The thought should frighten him, with the alien things happening to his body, the things he has yet to go through that his body was never made for, the intimate ways in which this has robbed him of control over himself. If he’s very honest with himself, he _is_ afraid, and he’d be a hell of a lot happier if Gabriel really were at his side to help him understand what’s going on and what he should expect.

But at the same time, it’s breathtaking, and the way it all roots into him with an undeniable sense of Gabriel’s spirit feels like a bond between them. A promise that their relationship is more than some odd infatuation driven by their respective fascinations with the weird and dangerous. He rubs at his belly again, letting the hungry pleasure roll through him for the sake of feeling those little lumps that represent the unborn lives he’s carrying inside him.

Somewhere without noticing, Gabriel’s invisible presence and that warm liquid yearning must tug Jack across the borders of sleep, because a warm silky limb comes stealing around his waist and that beloved smoky voice settles in to hum right next to his ear. “Beautiful,” Gabriel greets.

He sounds deeply, melodramatically satisfied, and Jack smiles and turns his head toward him. He can’t bring himself to open his eyes. If he does, Gabriel might not be there. “Missed you,” he murmurs sleepily.

Gabriel chuckles, seeming unbothered by Jack’s lazy muttering. “I missed you too.” More of him enfolds Jack in that marvelously enveloping embrace. Jack feels made of liquid, sweet and thick and too heavy to move himself. It’s delicious, to be lifted and moved where Gabriel wants him, like floating in warm, soft waves. They lap over his body, slick and wet, as comforting as they are sensual. One tentacle wraps assuredly around his cock and balls, cradling them with just a little delicious tightness. Another drags with slow savor down the small of his back and over his ass. He barely notices he’s being entered until the thicker part of the appendage begins stretching him open. He rolls his hips and moans.

“I’m not the only one with a lovely voice,” Gabriel teases. “That’s right, Jack, sing for me.”

Jack doesn’t muffle himself as Gabriel’s suckers walk gently over his body like an advancing line of wet kisses, tugging with gentle demand at his skin before releasing him to deliver their ministrations to the next neglected spot on his body. A tendril works with gentle insistence over his abdomen, massaging his belly. Jack whines greedily as he feels it press against the one pushing up into him. Caught between them, he can’t move. The two of them nudge delicately at the eggs from inside and out, gently stirring them until Jack is shivering with the waves of arousal.

With Gabriel wrapped around him, that need is finally a blissful promise rather than a torment. Jack twists luxuriously in Gabriel's hold and clutches at him. “Stay.”

Gabriel's hand strokes over his hair. “I’m always with you, Jack. You don’t need to be afraid. There’s nowhere you can go where I can’t hear you.”

“But you’re not _here._ ” All he wants is more of Gabriel. His body feels molten, pliant and greedy. One tentacle isn’t enough. He works an arm through the gripping limbs that are so delightfully everywhere to catch at the tip of another, tugging at it encouragingly until it moves to do his bidding. He keens with pleasure when it begins to probe at him, working him open till it can push in alongside the one that’s already in him.

Together, they stretch him wide, rubbing in turns at his prostate. He feels so damn full and stimulated, shocks of intense pleasure shivering through him over and over. It's exactly what he's craved after days of being edged. He lets it carry him away, drowning blissfully in Gabriel’s touch and scent and voice, Gabriel filling him till he feels like he’s meant for nothing else but to contain him. Just awake enough to know he’s asleep, he wonders vaguely if this dream is somehow Gabriel’s doing, and if there’s some way Jack could let him know to do this more often.

“I’m always here, my love,” Gabriel whispers against his ear. Those many limbs cradle Jack close till he feels like a precious treasure. “I’ll always come when you want me.”

Jack clings to the dream as long as he can. When he finally wakes, the moon is up and shining through his windows. His sheets are wet from his own fluids, and his body is sore. He feels so satiated that it’s too much effort to roll over. He’d swear he can still hear Gabriel's song hanging fading in the cabin.


	5. Chapter 5

In the dream again, Jack is stretched out on his back with Gabriel draped over him like a blanket, his hand splayed warm and big across Jack’s abdomen. “It’s going to be soon,” he says softly, and presses a kiss into Jack’s hair. “You need to come to me.”

Jack sits up out of the dream, bed sheets pooling around his hips and the eggs shifting in him to put a pleasurable shudder down his spine. This place isn’t a home to him. He’s staying at an inn in a foreign port for two weeks while his ship is laid up in drydock, and in the pink dawn light shining in at an unfamiliar angle, he feels like he’s come unmoored from the normal world around him.

He wraps a hand around the amulet Gabriel gave him. Gabriel’s song wreaths around him and fills the little room till it drowns out the sounds of the city and the gulls calling outside. It tugs at him. He knows where to go.

He splays his hand across his belly and feels the echo of Gabriel’s touch. He should go.

***

In some ways, the eggs have never really felt real to Jack. Oh, he can feel them viscerally when he presses his hand to his stomach, and every time he moves they shift inside him just enough to send sensation zinging and tingling through his body. But it’s almost as if they exist in some sort of dream-state, only becoming fully real when he turns his attention to them.

Then again, sometimes the same goes for Gabriel. Their time together is so far removed from Jack’s daily reality that when they’re apart, it could almost be a dream. Although sometimes he’s feared waking to discover Gabriel was a figment of his imagination, Jack never gave the idea much true consideration. Until now. Because now the eggs feel _very_ real, pressing against him inside and distending him till he wraps his arms around his middle to try to ease the discomfort while he walks.

He knows exactly—almost eerily—where Gabriel is waiting for him, and it’s a relief when he reaches the beach of the lagoon and spots the big dark shape streaking toward him just beneath the water. He wades in to meet it. The warm salt water seems to ease the quickly sharpening pain, soothing it back to a softer, almost pleasant ache.

He stops, eyes wide, at a point where he’s about hip-deep and presses his hand against his stomach. Something is moving inside him.

Gabriel breaks the surface just feet away from Jack, and strong arms snatch him and pull him close into a kiss that sucks the air from his lungs and draws him under. 

“Perfect timing,” Gabriel murmurs against his temple, cradling him close. “You’re alright now, Jack. I’ve got you. I have a place all ready for us.”

He cups Jack’s face in his hands and kisses the ocean into him as they sink down under the waves.

***

Jack’s fingers dig into the powdery sand of the lagoon, trying to stay grounded while Gabriel works him open. He’s never felt so rooted in his body. The things happening inside him are strange, frighteningly intense. He’s fixated on every little sensation as tiny delicate things move through him and Gabriel’s tentacle wriggles deeper inside him than anything was ever meant to go, coaxing them along on their way. It’s euphoric, a cocktail of discomfort and pleasure/pain and anticipation and fear that have him spiralling on a hormone high and simultaneously lost so deep in his own flesh and nerve endings he almost can’t remember how to get back out.

He groans and bucks against the grip keeping his legs spread, and Gabriel’s coils tighten restrictingly around him. “Careful,” Gabriel croons. His hands smooth over Jack’s hips and belly, kneading the tension out of him. A couple more limbs rub comfortingly against his lower back. Jack takes a deep breath, and lets the touches draw him out till he can find the borders of himself again. Lets them replace the strain with something tingling and sensual. “If you move too much, it will complicate the process. We don’t want to risk the babies.”

The babies… Jack’s hands slide down over his own body till his fingers twine with Gabriel’s over his stomach. His children. He’s been carrying them for weeks. He’s held them them inside himself, shared his body and his life with them. He realizes now how badly he wants to meet them. Wants to see the tiny little things that will grow up to be incredible creatures like Gabriel. “How long…?”

“A few hours.” Jack moans. With Gabriel massaging the stress away, the pleasure of being filled like this pours through him. He fights not to chase the pleasure; tries to imagine himself melting, soft and yielding to whatever needs to happen to his body now. “There are quite a few of them. They’re working their way out of their eggs and it can take a little while for them to all find their way out.”

Hours like this? Oh god. “I thought I was done with the edging.”

Gabriel grins, sly and unfairly sexy. “Just lie back and enjoy it.”

When he plunges into Jack again, Jack’s awareness sinks with him, down into where the hatching babies wriggle and twitch inside him. With his eyes closed, it all feels more immediate, more intense. He can follow Gabriel’s motions, gently helping the babies out of their shells and nudging them in the right direction through Jack’s body. Their little tentacles grip and pull at Jack’s inner walls to help them along, and he bites his fist against the noises it pulls out of him, strung taut between erotic and heart-burstingly sweet.

Gabriel reaches out to gently pull Jack’s hand away. “No, don’t be quiet.” He leans in till their foreheads are pressed together. “I can hear you from the inside out, Jack. You sound more beautiful than anything I’ve ever heard.” His eyes are wide and earnest, and Jack catches his head in his hands, mouth aching to kiss him.

When the first one emerges, Jack pushes his nose into Gabriel’s neck and sobs as its tiny tendrils catch at his rim to tug itself clear of his body. With one arm, Gabriel holds him close while he trembles in reaction, and with the other hand he reaches down with the softest smile Jack has ever seen on his face, glowing like the strands of pearls he wears looped around himself. 

Then Gabe’s eyes meet his, honey-colored and warm, and he holds his cupped hand up to Jack. “Your firstborn child. Congratulations, Jack, it’s a daughter.”

How Gabriel knows that is a mystery, but Jack has learned to take his word for things like this. Jack reaches out with a shaky hand, and she crawls uncertainly from Gabriel’s palm to his, enormous eyes peering up at him. She’s a little bigger than his thumb, and translucent, as if she’s made out of living glass. If he didn’t know what he was looking at, he’d mistake her for a baby octopus. Her mantle shows only the most rough-hewn hints of what will become a humanoid upper body. Her arms are more like fins. They clutch at his thumb and her impossibly delicate pink tentacles coil carefully around his fingers. She radiates with an odd, tiny warmth that makes him think of hugs.

Something in him melts in a way he’d never imagined was possible. He tries to look back to Gabriel, but he can’t take his eyes off her. “She’s beautiful.”

He would fight to the death for this tiny creature. He’d kill to protect her. She looks entirely alien, but she’s _theirs_ , his and Gabriel’s. She’s tiny and fragile and has a future full of unfathomable potential, and his heart bursts with the gift of her. He strokes her ever so gently with a fingertip, before he has to redirect all his concentration to the next one. He cups her against his chest and arches back, panting, while Gabriel helps the second one out.

They begin coming more quickly. Gabriel scoops up each one as it emerges and deposits it on Jack’s chest to let him meet their offspring. Jack cradles the growing bundle of squirming baby sirens in his arms while he trembles under them, with the overload of pleasure, pain and other, stranger sensations. He wants desperately to do something for them, to mark the bond between them somehow. Sirens choose their own names, Gabriel told him. Jack hadn’t expected that to hurt as much as it does. He doesn’t know what he can give them to help prepare them for their lives, and that’s an ache that drums through his entire body.

As if he can sense Jack’s distress, Gabriel strokes him: his arms, his flanks, his thighs. He kisses the inside of Jack’s knee. “They’ll be all right, Jack. They’re strong. They have so much of you in them already.” He reaches up to run a big hand ever so gently over the wriggly pile of their offspring, and then further, to cup against the side of Jack’s neck. The brace of it is welcome as Jack throws his head back at the over-sensitive stretch of the final one’s emergence. Gabriel deposits it with its siblings, and waits patiently till it releases his finger from its tiny grip. “They’re not very bright yet, but they know their parents.” 

Gabriel surges around him till Jack finds himself cuddled up against him with two thick limbs coiled around him and their squirmy pile of babies. Jack leans against his chest and tries to catch his breath. Everything feels a bit swimmy and ethereal. Distant, except for the babies and Gabriel’s touch and the throbbing ache of his own overtaxed body.

The little ones scoot and clamber over each other, looking everywhere with their huge eyes. They’re not the least bit human, but they’re surprisingly cute. Jack taps at one, and grins, charmed, when it taps back at his finger with its tiny little limb. 

“They’ll go, won’t they?” he asks quietly. That’s what Gabriel told him. Within a day or so of being born, they swim away into the ocean. “They don’t...you said they don’t stay.”

“Yes,” Gabriel answers. “They’re not like human children. They make their own way.”

Jack swallows and nods. He listened when Gabriel warned him before, but now that he’s holding them, they’re so tiny and fragile, made of spun glass with their brains barely developed yet, and the ocean is immense and full of dangers. And yet, they look up at him with their big eyes as though they’re trying to memorize his face and they cling to him in a way his stupid human emotions insist is affectionate, and he’s honestly not sure he can bear the thought of what could happen to these little ones out there.

He can’t even give them names. Underwater, he can’t feel tears on his face, but his eyes ache in a familiar way. “Isn’t there...isn’t there something we can do for them?”

Gabriel is a warm, close presence, but he doesn’t answer immediately. 

“I never knew my parents’ names, ” he says at last, that rough, superhumanly resonant voice vibrating in Jack’s chest. “But I remember their faces. The sound of their voices. The soft touch of their hands.” He holds one big sharp-nailed hand out to the babies, and a few of them grab onto him. He smiles. “And I could hear their hearts. The love in them was so clear. It cut through everything around me like whalesong.” 

Jack looks up at him. Gabriel’s eyes come back from a distant time and focus on Jack. “When it came time for me to choose a mate, that memory was my guide. Because of them, I knew what to look for. A heart that sang as clear and strong as theirs did.” He doesn’t try to shake the babies off his hand when he reaches up to cup Jack’s face. One of them tugs on a lock of Jack’s hair. “You’ve already given them what they need. These little ones have felt how much you love them, Jack. And when it comes time for them to find a mate, like I did, their memory of you will guide them to someone worthy of them.”

It…helps. It’s not enough, but Jack isn’t sure anything could be enough. No child can be sheltered forever. He leans his cheek against Gabriel’s bare shoulder and lets the rise and fall of his chest lull him. 

He has to give up these little children he bore, but there’s still Gabriel. This strange and beautiful sea monster he’s fallen in love with. This arrogant, tender ocean godling who seems to love him back. “And what about us, now? What happens next?”

Gabriel grins that dangerous sharp grin of his and lifts Jack’s chin to give him a soft, slow kiss. “First, you rest. Then, I believe I promised to show you the ocean’s wonders, didn’t I? I hope you have plenty of time off. It’s going to take us quite a while.”


End file.
